Brand systems are so multi-dimensional in terms of how they come to life. Alex harps on this fact, describing how a simple and flat logo can be exciting so long as the rest of the brand’s design is dynamic and complex in other ways. It’s a good example of the logo is not your brand.”Ī logo, of course, is just one component of a branding system, albeit a very critical one. “It plays its role and lets the rest of the system do the heavy lifting. “I think of their system as being so dynamic, has so much life to it, has so many colors and typefaces, and illustration, and then the logo itself just serves the purpose of being an iconic signal and familiar representation of the brand,” he elaborates. They all start to appear like they are flattening and simplifying and losing some character.”Īlex provides Dropbox as an example of a brand that has executed a flat logo successfully in a way that doesn’t feel too derivative or, to put it bluntly, boring. I think you’ve seen this a little bit in the fashion space and other categories where every brand’s logo starts to feel somewhat familiar and like there isn’t as much differentiation. “Brands are starting to become a bit homogenized. “Things are starting to look similar,” says Alex. Naysayers have even coined the word “blanding” in regards to this wave of minimalism and flattening. While this context makes a lot of sense, there are clear downsides to a dominant design trend that tends to strip away individualized flair and detail. It’s not chrome or doesn’t have shine.” Simply put, flat logos are more malleable, easier to work with in different ways, and modify. All of that is easier when your logo doesn’t have seven different textures. The brand can take it and reimagine it in different ways-give it motion, give it more life. “The place where most brand interaction is happening these days is on your phone, so having a logo that’s flatter and simplified allows it to scale down to mobile sizes and allows it to be more flexible and change color. “Brands are expressing themselves in more moments and places where they are alive.” “A logo that was maybe once just on the hood of a car and maybe a dealership now has to work on a mobile app, a website, and as a social media avatar,” Alex adds. Essentially, the duties of a modern-day logo are vastly different from those of a logo created in, say, the 90s or even early 2000s, given our hyper-digital world. “The reason why brands are doing this is because of flexibility and the variety of places in which people interact with brands,” he says. You can attribute the flattening of logos to a few things, Alex explains. “Now it’s something that we’ve seen happening in many categories, moving into the fashion world and now in the automobile industry.” “They really started this trend,” he tells us. After chatting with Alex recently about being creative and eating buffalo wings (two things that can often go hand in hand, in fact), we knew he’d be able to shed some insightful light on our world of ever-flattening logos.Īccording to Alex, the flat logo trend isn’t all that new, first breaking onto the scene a decade or so ago with the emergence of start-ups and big tech companies. To get to the bottom of this leaning toward flat and minimal logos, we sought out the expertise of designer Alex Center, the founder of the Brooklyn-based design and branding company CENTER. Even the network ABC has gotten in on the action. Fanning the flames has been a recent slew of brands in the automobile industry, including Volvo, BMW, and Cadillac, who each released 2D logos following this trend. Unless you’ve holed yourself up in an anti-design commune, you probably know about the ongoing flat, 2D versus 3D logo debate the design world has waged for the last couple of years.
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